


Voices of the Drowned

by beeawolf



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: AU where I fix Rogue, Gen, Perhaps Shay/Liam later if I get that far
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 15:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11107413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeawolf/pseuds/beeawolf
Summary: Shay has always been trouble, but he's trouble with a good heart, which is half the problem.





	Voices of the Drowned

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sort of rewrite of AC Rogue, because I was displeased with Rogue's plot. It takes place immediately after Shay's outburst at Achilles. I might get stuff wrong, and float away from canon off into the distance; you are welcome to join.

_Under the mile off moon we trembled listening_

_To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound_

_And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing_

_The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind._

_—_ "Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed" by Dylan Thomas

 

Hope all but slams the door in his face, and Liam glances back uneasily before returning his attention to Shay. He's seen Hope angry, of course he has, but not like this. And Shay...

 Shay walks in front of him fast, too fast, with his head down and his shoulders hunched. It's the way he always looks when he's three seconds away from exploding about some real or imagined injustice. The way he looked years ago when Liam found him drinking and fighting his way through New York, near-ruined and carrying a wild anger in his eyes. ( _I don't need savin' by your saintliness_ , he'd informed Liam, who had ignored this as he'd dragged his old friend out of the gutter -- the very literal gutter.)

"What the hell was that?" Liam says, trying to stay calm, trying to _understand_ – Shay has always been trouble, but he's trouble with a good heart, which is half the problem. Shay has always _cared_ too much.

( _I killed a dying man, Liam. What does that make me?_

Merciful. You ended his suffering.

_And what gives me the right?)_

Shay doesn't respond, stomping down the stairs, and Liam grabs him by the shoulders as they reach the bottom, dragging him around before he can reach the front door.

"What _happened_ , Shay?"

For a moment Shay just stares at him, which is more unnerving than if he'd started yelling. He's got hollowed out eyes, a haunted sort of look that Liam's seen now and then on the newer recruits after a mission. Seen on _Shay_ once or twice in the beginning, for that matter, but this is something else.

"Doesn't matter what happened, does it?" Shay finally says in a low, petulant voice. "You're not going to listen to me. You'll side with Achilles like you always do."

"This again?" Liam growls, dropping his hands from Shay's shoulders and stepping back in a flare of frustration. This _stupid_ , childish jealousy – it doesn't belong in the Brotherhood and it doesn't belong in his friend. "Just because I don't question every damned order –"

"Because you're attack dogs!" Suddenly he's loud and vicious again. "All of you! Achilles says bite and off you all run snapping your teeth but you never wonder _why_ –" He breaks off into a ragged curse and turns his face away.

It's mostly the note of hysteria in Shay's voice that keeps Liam from decking him. And it's the way his shoulders are shaking, the way his eyes are burning rage and fear all at once in a confused mess, a rising storm ready to sweep over everything.

Shay's always been trouble, always been good at stirring up fights when the mood takes him. When he can't handle living with whatever's got him bothered that day. But Liam will not – has never – let himself be baited. He takes a deep breath, and lets it out slow.

"Shay," Liam says, and gets rewarded with another fixed stare. "What happened in Lisbon?"

He expects raging, expects shouting, expects accusations and bitterness. He does not expect Shay to go so utterly still.

"You know what happened," he says, but he looks uncertain.

Liam lets out another sigh, exasperated this time. "If I knew what happened I wouldn't be askin' you, idiot. You came fresh off the Morrigan shoutin' like you lost your feckin' mind. Achilles is –"

"Achilles is a murderer," Shay snarls with surprising force, snapping to attention.

"Achilles is an _assassin_ ," Liam says, unable to hide his impatience this time. "And so are _you,_ in case you've forgotten _,_ so why the _hell_ —"

"Lisbon fell," Shay interrupts. "The whole city –" His voice cracks and he stops, tries again. "When I touched the artifact –" He breaks off, gazing at Liam. "You don't _know_?"

Liam shakes his head, cold beginning to creep up his spine.

Shay closes his eyes.

"I saw a mother," he says, "with three little lads. She was – I ran, everything was...the city _fell_ ," He opens his eyes, finds Liam again. "She looked up at me. I _saw_ her. I saw her look up at me, and I looked back. And the building came down, and I –" He swallows. "I ran."

"There was nothing you could do for them," Liam says. Such empty words, and he doesn't even know if they're true. Shay has always been...

Shay has always been running.

_The whole city fell._ The whole _city_. But how...?

Shay shakes his head slowly. "No," he says. "No...because we killed her. We killed innocents, all of us. Everything we did – you, and me, and Hope – and...and meanwhile Achilles is up there," his voice flies abruptly toward hysteria again, "plotting his next genocide!"

" _Listen_ to yourself," Liam says."How could Achilles have known what the artifact would do?"

"It happened in Haiti," Shay replies fiercely. And this is nothing new. Stubborn, angry Shay, always convinced of his own righteousness...

But this time... _It happened in Haiti_. An earthquake, then? Yes. _The whole city fell._ He had touched the artifact, and then... He must have watched the city collapse under his feet.

Shay's still talking, his shoulders set, looking like he's ready to charge up the stairs again. "It happened in Haiti and now...now it's happened in Lisbon, and he won't _listen_ –"

"Perhaps he'll listen if you talk sense," comes another voice from the staircase, and they both turn to see Hope leaning there against the banister with her arms crossed, watching Shay. "Instead of barging in and attacking like a mad dog."

"He _knew_ ," Shay insists, rounding on her. "He _had_ to know, he knew about Haiti, he had to know it could happen again!" Liam can see him coming apart at the seams now, can hear the way his voice trembles with desperation.

And suddenly all of it makes sense. Or at least the part of it that's raging in front of him right now. If Achilles didn't know, then there's no one to blame. _Shay_ touched the artifact. _Shay_ ran away.

If Achilles didn't know, then it's all Shay's fault.

Liam grips Shay by the shoulders, dragging him around again before he can take another step toward Hope – a good thing, because Hope is eyeing him like a viper. What had Shay _said_? All Liam had heard was insensible shouting.

"Listen to me," he says, and Shay doesn't respond, but he doesn't move either, so Liam takes that as a good sign. "We'll talk about this. We will. But you need to get some rest. You look like you're about to fall into your own grave."

Shay hesitates for just a moment, and Liam seizes his chance.

"You're right," he adds soothingly, catching Shay's gaze while there's still some softness to it. "Achilles made a mistake." (He had to have. How could he have known...?) Hope makes a noise of dissent, and Liam casts her a heavy look before shifting to settle his arm around Shay's shoulders. "But there's nothin' can be changed right now by shoutin' yourself senseless."

Shay barely seems to notice him. "All those lost souls," he breathes. "Women and children, screaming and dying. And for what? So the assassins can have a taste of power? Is that what he wants?"

"Of course not," Hope snaps, stepping down toward him. Shay twists around again.

 "Then you tell me what they died for," he says, low and fierce, a dark rage barely controlled.

Hope's eyes narrow, but Liam marches Shay away before either of them can drag this out any further.

"That's enough," he says flatly. Shay stiffens but doesn't resist as Liam leads him down the hall to the room they share, Hope's pointed gaze on their backs all the while. His thin frame shivers under Liam's arm, and ah, he's always been so damned scrawny.

Liam guides Shay to sit down on the bed, and watches the fight go right out of him as soon as the door clicks shut. His head drops to his hands, breath coming up rough, and Liam takes the time to look him over. He looks – he looks like someone's recently tried to drown him, his hair a sea-stiffened mess. His boots are caked in still-damp mud, likely from where the snow's all melted near the shoreline. He really _had_ come straight off the Morrigan. With the door closed all Liam can smell is salt and sea and a hard journey – the Shay Cormac definition of freedom.

"When you brought me here," Shay says, lifting his head a fraction in order to stare at the floorboards. "When you brought me here, you said we were helping people."

Liam watches him, notes the fists clenching, the shoulders stiffening. "Aye. We are."

"How?" Shay demands, and suddenly he's up again and pacing and tracking mud all over the floor. "All I ever do is go around stabbing people in the back – Lawrence Washington, Samuel Smith – there's no honor in killing a man who can hardly stand up on his own!"

Liam rubs wearily at his forehead. It's an old argument by now, one they've rehashed again and again – usually at the wheel of the Morrigan and safely away from any possibility of Achilles overhearing. "There is if he's hurtin' innocents. A man doesn't need to stand to give orders."

Shay lets out a broken laugh. It's a terrible sound, splintered and strange. "You stand there and talk to me about innocents? How can any of you – when _I_ killed – I _slaughtered_ –"

"You didn't _know_ , Shay."

"But Achilles did." There it is again, that low, dark tone. A depth of rage that Liam has never heard from him before. "And you tell me to go and _rest_ ," Shay says, stepping too close, fists clenched too tight. "In this place? After everything he's done?"

"After he kept you fed and clothed and out of the taverns, y'mean," Liam says coolly.

There's a flash of _something_ in Shay's face, and then – then nothing at all. "I told you," he says, shaking his head. "Doesn't matter what happened." He goes to push past Liam and out the door, but Liam grabs him by the hood of his coat.

"Sit your arse down," he growls, and shoves Shay at the bed, moving to block the door. "You've been at sea too long, you've lost your damned head." 

Shay stumbles against the mattress, but he doesn't sit down. "Don't tell me what I've lost," he answers quietly. "You weren't there."

"No," says Liam. "I wasn't. And if I was I expect I'd be rough as you are now. But going around shoutin' your head off isn't going to help any of those poor lost souls. What's done is done, Shay."

"Oh, so that's all? What's done is done, so let's move onto the next mission, let's go and smite the next city—"

"I didn't say that."

"You weren't _there_ ," Shay repeats, and this time it sounds an awful lot like an accusation.

"Aye," Liam says, inclining his head. "I know."

For a moment there's a strange, uneasy silence between them. And then Shay goes back to the bed, sinking down there and dropping his head to his hands again. Liam waits. When he finally lifts his face, his eyes are red and glassy.

"I ran," he all but whispers. "All around me they were dying. And I _ran_."

Liam sits down heavily beside him. There had been times, when they were small, that they would huddle together after Liam had rescued Shay from some fight, some loss, the latest terror of his own making. There were even times when – if he was sure no one was watching – Shay would bury his face in Liam's shoulder and all but cling to him, trembling.

But they're not small anymore, and there is no rescue from this.

"I'm sorry," Liam hears himself say, soft and sincere. And he is, he realizes. He's sorry he ever brought Shay here – proud and righteous and soft-hearted Shay, who still feels guilty over killing a man who would have had him shot on sight. Shay, who is only really ever happy behind the wheel of a ship, who carries on about freedom and choice but stubbornly struggles with the idea that all of it comes at a price.

Shay, who compared a precursor artifact to a magic lantern.

It was like bringing a terrier into a den of wolves.

"I'm sorry, Shay. I am."

And Shay lets out a long sigh. "Sorry doesn't matter, Liam," he mumbles. "I kept saying it all the way home."

*

Shay sleeps like the dead that night, with his muddy boots still on. Liam doesn't sleep at all, which turns out to be just as well, because Hope comes to the room sometime in the darkest hours between night and morning. She opens the door a crack, beckoning to him, and Liam gets up slowly, glancing at Shay, who remains an unmoving shadow. There is little light in the hall either, but Liam's eyes have long been used to darkness.

"Achilles says he's willing to listen," Hope says, just above a whisper. " _If_ Shay can get himself together long enough to spit out a coherent sentence."

Liam doesn't comment on that last part. "You talked to him," he says. It is not a question. Hope has always been the strategist, hasn't she? The problem-solver.

 "Yes," Hope says, and somehow she manages to convey a flood of reproach in that single syllable. "What happened to him?"

"You heard him," Liam answers tiredly. Hope likes to ask questions she already knows the answers to. "Lisbon fell. By his own hands, from the sound of it."

"He used the artifact?"

There is something strange in her voice, and Liam stares at the shape of her in the darkness, a well of wariness rising in his chest. "Why would you say that?"

"There is precedent. And how else –"

"It was an accident." It sounds absurd, somehow. It was an accident. Like Shay had knocked over a cup of tea, rather than an entire city full of lives.

_Sorry doesn't matter, Liam._

"Precedent for what?" he goes on, when Hope stays silent. He can feel anger stiffening his shoulders, can feel his exhaustion getting the better of him. It had already been a long day before Shay had shown up to drag it out a little worse for wear. There have been a lot of long days lately.

"For destruction," Hope answers evasively.

And Liam has had enough of evasive. He takes a heavy step toward her, speaking lower now. You never knew who was listening in this house. "Are you accusing him or not?"

"We know the artifacts are powerful," Hope replies evenly. "The Pieces of Eden can have...effects on the mind—"

"So you are," Liam interrupts.

"No. I'm suggesting."

"Yeah." Liam takes a step back. "Well, do you have any other lovely suggestions? Or can I go back to sleep?"

There's a pause, and he thinks they both know he wasn't sleeping, that he will not be sleeping tonight.

"Achilles wants to speak with him first thing in the morning. He wants details."

"'Course, yeah," Liam mutters, turning away.

"He's still angry."

"Yeah," Liam repeats.

"Liam."

He stops, staring straight ahead into the nothingness where he knows the bedroom door is waiting. "What, Hope?" he says, as flatly as he can.

"Make sure he's ready. Make sure he speaks instead of shouting." Finally, a hint of emotion in her voice. Worry, he thinks. Shay is trouble, but he's their trouble...

"Yeah," Liam says, again. "Yeah, I will."

He finds the door, and slips back inside. And he knows, even before his eyes have a chance to make sense of the shadows.

 Shay is gone.


End file.
